Nanometer Transistor - <AUTHOR> http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/news/one-nanometer-transistor-keeps-moores-law-relevant-another-year/?utm_source=All+About+Circuits+Members&utm_campaign=4750683ae7-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2016_11_16&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_2565529c4b-4750683ae7-266134265/ <comment><USER2> I'd imaging carbon nanotubes will also holdup better to electron-migration than silicon? I love how technology pushes the limits of physics.

It seems like ages ago that we thought we reached the limits of mechanical hard-drive capacity (where the magnetic heads would flip neighbouring bits). Then the perpendicular storage literally created another dimension from nowhere!</comment>


Dwolla goes national, launches social cash sharing integration - <AUTHOR> http://www.siliconprairienews.com/2010/12/dwolla-goes-national-launches-social-cash-sharing-integration

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome to see Dwolla taking the next step in world domination.</comment>


Google Reader stops updating private feeds - <AUTHOR> https://productforums.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!categories/reader/something-is-broken

<comment><USER2> I have been a regular user of Google Reader and love it... However, I've noticed in the last couple of months that every now and then, there are some hitches - either new feeds are not shown or the site suddenly slows down like anything... On doing some quick search Google, I realise it's not just me.. Time to move to other service I guess...

</comment><comment><USER3> I haven't had any of these problems, but I would really like to have similar filtering capabilities to gmail. I hope they're not abandoning it, I use it daily.</comment>


Reddit – how I grew to love then hate it within 24 hours and what I learned - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@shuisonfire/reddit-how-i-grew-to-love-and-then-hate-it-within-24-hours-and-everything-i-learned-along-the-way-ee26a1b3036a

<comment><USER2> reddit that fickle mistress.</comment>


Hipster app – Relax, improve focus or boost you productivity - <AUTHOR> http://hipstersound.club <comment><AUTHOR> Ambient tool mostly for productivity.</comment>


Show HN: My app finds the word you've been trying to remember all day - <AUTHOR> https://zetabee.com/tip-of-my-tongue/

<comment><AUTHOR> I love playing with word lists and text data. While trying to learn iOS/Obj-C coding, I ended up making this app unexpectedly. I wasn't even planning on putting it up on the App Store but my wife said others might like it. I made it free today (99c otherwise) so I could share it with HNers.

This is the original webapp I made a while ago that inspired the iOS app: <http://chir.ag/projects/tip-of-my-tongue/>

</comment><comment><USER2> Great idea. It's little apps like this that make the app store awesome.

I can see this being really good for brainstorming business/product names too...

</comment><comment><USER3> I like the app-it's pretty cool seeing extensive lists of words that get returned for even a small set of letters. The Hangman and Unscramble options are good ideas, too... Nicely done!</comment>


Trump reveals Mexico migrant plan by waving document around - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-48604023 <comment><AUTHOR> Not the first time someone in power/authority has inadvertently revealed plans by leaving documents exposed to photography - yet another example of how people don't learn, and don't take security seriously.

If you're designing a system, assume people will leave things exposed or accessible.</comment>


Show HN: Xeroxed Paper Style Portfolio - <AUTHOR> https://sava.io/ <comment><USER2> It looks impecable. But without the explanation I think I would never guess the inspiration. With the explanation, my first expectation was that the website would be titled and distorted on the edge.</comment>


Nofakeinternet.org - <AUTHOR> https://nofakeinternet.org/

<comment><USER2> TL;DR:

Zuckerberg's partnership with telecom giants, Internet.org, provides access to a fake Internet where selected services are prioritized over others. This scheme threatens innovation, free expression, and privacy online.

It blocks many of the websites, apps, and services the world loves from being made available on equal terms.

The fake Internet will also restrict access to local service providers struggling to get a foothold online.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, but this is a _temporary_ solution that is aimed at sparking a higher quality of living in these 2nd and 3rd world countries. Fact is, they dont have the infrastructure to support services like Netflix or Facebook in its current state. You must understand the need for quality connections to places like Web-MD or Wikipedia. Given enough time, without question these places will implement net neutrality. Its just a matter of playing the cards you are dealt. p.s. Fuck Mark Zuckerberg

<comment><USER4> I think it is unrealistic to assume that the original few who enjoy their little walled garden will embrace net neutrality once these places have better infrastructure. Can you think of any examples of this happening? If you were a shareholder for one of the original companies would you be happy about it?

Also, I don't think very highly of Mark Zuckerberg's ethics, especially with regard to users privacy, but he's a very effective leader and there's no sense getting angry with his success.

It is up to governments to regulate markets, we can't expect CEOs to do anything but promote their own agenda. If you want to get mad at someone, take it out on government regulators who are corrupt or otherwise fail to promote competition.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't get it. It's not that internet.org/facebook prevents anyone from doing something similar. So if you don't like it, make your own free internet.

<comment><USER6> This should ideally be stopped by regulation. If not, we still have the right to criticize and protest against it.

<comment><USER5> That's clearly not my ideal.

I can see how we first-worlders really like net neutrality and everything. I do see that we fear that our web access might get more expensive if access prioritisation is successful somewere else, but: Since we all already do have access to the internet it just appears to me to be endlessly selfish from us to make them wait 10 years to get the full internet for themselves.

<comment><USER6> I live in India, FWIW.

My major gripe with internet.org is that its not really "for the poor". The minimum requirement for internet.org is an Android smartphone, which costs atleast 6000 INR (100 USD).

If someone has the purchasing power for an Android smarthphone (over say, a dumbphone that would cost 1/6th of that), you definitely have enough to pay for data charges (which are in the range of a 2-3 USD per month at most). I used to browse internet on Opera Mini on a "pay-as-you-go" plan (something like 0.1 INR/40kb I think) and I paid less than 1 USD/month for that.

My usage was certainly minimal (HN + GMail + Google News + Facebook) with images turned off. But now that I have the purchasing ability to buy a smartphone, I do have enough to pay for a costlier data plan as well (3-4 USD/month).

Paying <5% of your phone cost a month for data charges is not that hard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Isn't this just what AOL was in the US in the 1990's? When the "open" internet got better than the walled garden AOL provided, people switched. But AOL was a critical step in getting the masses onto the internet in the first place.</comment>


Boston's Big Dig Finally Nearing Completion - <AUTHOR> http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071225/ap_on_re_us/big_dig_the_end

<comment><USER2> Can we please, for the love of face, have a way to vote articles irrelevant?</comment>


Heroku Announces New Version: "Celadon Cedar" - <AUTHOR> http://news.heroku.com/news_releases/heroku-announces-major-new-version-celadon-cedar-includes-new-process-model-full-nodejs-

<comment><USER2> Oh, hey, it appears you can run python stuff too: <https://gist.github.com/0a08e676559fc03e6200>

      kurt$ heroku run bash
      Running bash attached to terminal... up, run.2
      ~ $ python -V
      Python 2.7.1
      ~ $

<comment><USER2> Huh, so the Python support is pretty complete:

Simple Flask app: <https://gist.github.com/efec5e060e88abc87821>

Python/Django: <https://gist.github.com/866c79035a2d066a5850>

<comment><USER2> Wow, it gets even more interesting:

      /tmp $ cd redis-2.2.8/
      /tmp/redis-2.2.8 $ make
      /tmp/redis-2.2.8 $ cd src
      /tmp/redis-2.2.8/src $ ./redis-server
      [295] 31 May 15:36:30 # Warning: no config file specified, using the default config. In   order to specify a config file use 'redis-server /path/to/redis.conf'
      [295] 31 May 15:36:30 * Server started, Redis version 2.2.8
      [295] 31 May 15:36:30 # WARNING overcommit_memory is set to 0! Background save may fail under low memory condition. To fix this issue add 'vm.overcommit_memory = 1' to /etc/sysctl.conf and then reboot or run the command 'sysctl vm.overcommit_memory=1' for this to take effect.
      [295] 31 May 15:36:30 * The server is now ready to accept connections on port 6379
      [295] 31 May 15:36:30 - 0 clients connected (0 slaves), 790480 bytes in use
      [295] 31 May 15:36:35 - 0 clients connected (0 slaves), 790480 bytes in use
      [295] 31 May 15:36:40 - 0 clients connected (0 slaves), 790480 bytes in use

<comment><USER3> Absolutely none of this is officially supported, right? (It looks very much like "game on, DotCloud", from what you've been finding, though....)

<comment><USER2> I don't think any of it's supported. Redis will run, but you can't exactly get to it (no TCP routing mesh apparently). It really just seems like they made it _really_ easy to add new languages.

<comment><USER4> This is because running commands is from a one-off dyno vs. the formation dyno's that have requests routed to them.

See: <http://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/oneoff-admin-ps>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I just created my first Node.js app. Clone ry's demo at:

<https://github.com/ry/node_chat>

Add a Procfile and package.json per the docs:

<http://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/node-js>

And it just works:

<http://node-chat.herokuapp.com/>

<comment><USER6> It worked for me too :) but check up your billing usage statement it will be showing some charges, even though you are under free limit. I just filed a support ticket with heroku, after scaling the web dyno to 0 ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> _Cedar now allows you to scale any dyno as low or high as needed, including all the way down to 0. This means you could choose to scale your web dyno down to 0 and a worker to 1. If left this way for the entire month you would have 720 worker dyno-hours and 0 web dyno-hours total at the end of the month, fully inside the 750 available per month._ <http://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/billing-changes>

This means any process type, for example cron jobs, for free. As long as only one process is ran per app, but as far as I know, you can run as many apps as you want. This sounds like a very nice deal. Am I missing something?

<comment><USER8> No, that's the long and short of it.

Of course, you can't share multiple apps behind one domain, so if the one dyno isn't keeping you you'll need to scale up and pay for it.

OTOH, if you don't need to worry about any extra latency (maybe?) you could probably get away with a rails+node app like <https://github.com/maccman/holla> running free by having one app just run the web interface, and point the backend at another app running node.

As soon as you go outside of one tech stack it's cheaper to just get a small VPS to start with, but heroku definitely has its perks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It seems unlikely that rack-cache + memcached would actually offer similar performance to varnish. This seems like a pretty bad set of changes for apps that need to serve out lots of static content - think newspapers, blogs, etc.

Will the old configuration style for http caching continue to be supported indefinitely?

<comment><USER2> I expect that someone will build a Varnish add on for Heroku. It even looks possible to run Varnish on a dyno, believe it or not.

I love Varnish, but it's completely inflexible in Heroku so it's always been a mixed blessing. Sticking Google Analytics on your page, for instance, creates cookies for users that mean they will no longer get cached content. It's something that I can work around with dedicated Varnish, but Heroku can't really fix for me.

<comment><USER10> That's not true. Google Analytics cookies are injected via JS. When heroku's Varnish is checking for a cached version of the page, it strips any cookie information given by the browser.

We've are running production apps with Varnish caching + Google Analytics without issue.

Set your cookies with JS or on uncached pages (such as POST logins) and you'll be fine.

<comment><USER2> It's possible that it strips the GA cookies (which is cool, I had no idea), but Varnish doesn't strip cookie information from the browser. If it did you wouldn't get any Rails sessions or anything.

<comment><USER10> It's not specific to GA cookies.

You can set cookies on uncached pages in ruby and read them without issue in JS on Varnish cached pages. The page will still be cached even if the user has a session cookie.

Basically: don't set or get cookies in ruby on cached pages and you'll be fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "LXC used as a container for all dynos running on Celadon Cedar"

Has anybody published a complete SELinux or SMACK policy to use LXC with untrusted users? Last I checked LXC wasn't fully ready yet.

<comment><USER12> Very interested to hear this as well. Anyone from Heroku can comment?

<comment><USER13> LXC is one of several isolation layers used in the Heroku dyno manifold to ensure process security and resource guarantees. Here is a more in-depth discussion of Heroku dyno isolation: <http://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/dyno-isolation>.

<comment><USER11> So LXC is fully secure now if you stick to chroot?

[http://www.mail-archive.com/lxc- firstname.lastname@example.com/...](http://www.mail-archive.com/lxc- email@example.com/msg00992.html)

<comment><USER14> You can't contain root in lxc. It's great for unprivileged users, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The use of LXC containers now is quite interesting for security.

"- Full isolation of processes for security and performance"

Have there been security-related incidents before with their slugs? Is this to address safer multi-tenancy?

<comment><USER15> _Have there been security-related incidents before with their slugs?_

Absolutely. [http://daverecycles.com/post/2858880862/heroku-hacked- dissec...](http://daverecycles.com/post/2858880862/heroku-hacked-dissecting- herokus-critical-security)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Blog post with code examples is here - much better than press release: <http://blog.heroku.com/archives/2011/5/31/celadon_cedar/>

</comment><comment><USER17> This is beautiful. I like how they got rid of Varnish. The problem with Varnish was that you couldn't test it in your local development environment. (Heroku wouldn't give out their Varnish configuration, so you could only make an educated guess as to how their Varnish was configured.)

</comment><comment><USER18> Fantastic! I am glad to see support for HTTP 1.1. Anyone know if unicorn/Rails 3.1 chunked responses will work out of the box?

<comment><USER19> It seems as though it will. I read somewhere in the Dev Center that an app called "foobar" can now be accessed via "foobar.herokuapp.com", which uses an advanced new HTTP stack that supports async and chinned responses too I believe. I don't remember the exact page I read that, but take a peek in the Dev Center for more info.

<comment><USER20> [http://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/cedar#new_http_stack_he...](http://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/cedar#new_http_stack_herokuappcom)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It looks that the new stack is based on BeeHive (<http://getbeehive.com/>).

<comment><USER22> Um, no.

<comment><USER21> No? Not even a little? Just to be clear - I mean the part that replaced nginx + Varnish combo (HTTP routing), not the deployment stuff.

In any case, I guess you won't / can't say what you're using instead of those two? ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is exciting stuff. I have been learning Ruby on Rails and will be pushing my code to Heroku soon.

</comment><comment><USER24> Full native Node.js support. Alright!

</comment><comment><USER25> Anyone find that grey on grey text a little hard to read?

</comment><comment><USER26> it would makes sense if the documentation and the API had been updated before they did the press release. otherwise, great news for node.js people!

<comment><USER27> Take a look at the documentation below:

<http://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/cedar>

<http://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/node-js>

<comment><USER26> great, thanks for the links!</comment></comment></comment>


Building a neural network from scratch in Haskell - <AUTHOR> http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~blynn/haskell/brain.html <comment><USER2> Maybe it's just me, but this looks like a bunch of incomprehensible gibberish code. I'm sure I could understand it if I spent many hours pouring over it, but why would you ever do that? When written out in Python (or even in JS!), the whole thing is so much simpler looking and more closely resembles the underlying math. This is especially true if you use a package like Numpy. I know he said he didn't want to use any libraries, but if the underlying primitives in the problem are vectors/matrices, then it seems like you are reinventing the wheel in a very substandard way that doesn't aid in understanding in any way and results in something that isn't beautiful, isn't high performance, and is confusing for someone to read-- even if the person is familiar with the subject matter!

<comment><USER3> _but if the underlying primitives in the problem are vectors /matrices, then it seems like you are reinventing the wheel in a very substandard way that doesn't aid in understanding in any way and results in something that isn't beautiful, isn't high performance, and is confusing for someone to read_

You mean like...both of the languages you listed?

There's an obviously superior, faster, simpler language when working with vectors (APL), but people are _obsessed_ with new languages.

If you really think it can be done in Python better than in Haskell, why not demo it in Python? You'll get internet points, and if you're right, you'll have something to show for it.

<comment><USER4> > Why not demo it in Python?

Not OP, but here: [https://gist.github.com/stfwn/62e51d86ca4ff155becd3c6a14adf6...](https://gist.github.com/stfwn/62e51d86ca4ff155becd3c6a14adf60e)

You should be able to wget the file and run it (Python 3) from start to finish without any set-up and get ~88% accuracy on the test set.

It uses all the data (not one-sixth like in the blog posts) and does 200 iterations by default, so here's the loss plot on the training set if you want to skip all the fun: [https://i.imgur.com/F57zmXV.png](https://i.imgur.com/F57zmXV.png)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I love haskell as much as the next PL nerd, but the community has a real code golf problem. An example from the blog post:

        deltas :: [Float] -> [Float] -> [([Float], [[Float]])] -> ([[Float]], [[Float]])
        deltas xv yv layers = let
          (avs@(av:_), zv:zvs) = revaz xv layers
          delta0 = zipWith (*) (zipWith dCost av yv) (relu' <$> zv)
          in (reverse avs, f (transpose . snd <$> reverse layers) zvs [delta0]) where
            f _ [] dvs = dvs
            f (wm:wms) (zv:zvs) dvs@(dv:_) = f wms zvs $ (:dvs) $
              zipWith (*) [(sum $ zipWith (*) row dv) | row <- wm] (relu' <$> zv)

        ...

        descend av dv = zipWith (-) av ((eta *) <$> dv)

        learn :: [Float] -> [Float] -> [([Float], [[Float]])] -> [([Float], [[Float]])]
        learn xv yv layers = let (avs, dvs) = deltas xv yv layers
          in zip (zipWith descend (fst <$> layers) dvs) $
            zipWith3 (\wvs av dv -> zipWith (\wv d -> descend wv ((d*) <$> av)) wvs dv)
              (snd <$> layers) avs dvs

Writing this in 2-3x as many lines with clear variable names for some intermediate expressions would make it so much clearer. Haskell has a nasty reputation for "you have to study the shit out of it to make heads or tails of the code" and I'm pretty certain that 90% of it comes from how terse haskellers try to make code.

Just add intermediate expressions and annotate their types, maybe even with some type synonyms for intermediate types, because code is for humans.

<comment><USER6> Your wish is my command:

[http://h2.jaguarpaw.co.uk/posts/refactoring-neural- network/](http://h2.jaguarpaw.co.uk/posts/refactoring-neural-network/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> All these building NNs in haskell, ocaml or another language solving an extremely simple problem which is ok if you want to just have some fun. But if the proponents are really serious they would put out a detailed tutorial solving a complex task (e.g building a state-of-the-art language model) showing the ease / difficulty of the process, and how using a typed functional language helps in debugging the model - which is supposed to be the biggest selling point of these languages? This will also show whether it is viable for a real life practitioner to invest time in learning these languages / frameworks.

<comment><USER8> People have done this but with hasktorch. Which are haskell bindings to the pytorch C++ libraries. The static typing definitely helps when you want to ensure that the input/output shapes of a layer are consistent.

<comment><USER7> Can you please point to such a tutorial? I am interested.

<comment><USER8> There's no proper tutorial AFAIK. Just examples in the hasktorch repo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Not really my scene, but I've been liking the look of Torsten Scholak's Hasktorch:

[https://github.com/tscholak/hasktorch](https://github.com/tscholak/hasktorch)

<comment><USER10> I think that Hasktorch is a very cool project but it is not turtles all the way down: it is a Haskell API on top of PyTorch.

The Haskell bindings for TensorFlow are a little bit difficult for me to work with. When HaskTorch gets more mature and stable, it will hopefully be easier to use than the TensorFlow bindings.

</comment></comment><comment> pickle-ts In typescript (from scratch recognizing hand-written digits in browser):

Live: [https://deep-learning.stackblitz.io/](https://deep- learning.stackblitz.io/)

Live edit code: [https://stackblitz.com/edit/deep- learning](https://stackblitz.com/edit/deep-learning)

<comment><USER10> Nice. I really recommend that practitioners implement simple neural architectures from scratch for learning, but use TensorFlow, PyTorch, mxnet, etc. for production and serious research.

New frameworks like TensorFlow for Swift and Julia's Flux are a little easier to understand if you read the code, but still complex stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> played with this for ~5 mins and it's insanely bad (maybe it "guessed" right 3/15 tries?) i.e. slightly better than random guesses, even with very clear handwriting :(

<comment><USER12> You had bad luck I guess. I just did 15 tries and it only got one wrong. Not really sure what this says though.

<comment><USER13> Are you talking about the "Sample" button, or drawing the digits yourself? It seems to have a very good accuracy on the samples, but gets a lot of my hand- drawn digits wrong.

Seems like a classic case of overfitting to be honest.

<comment><USER12> Ah I didn't know you could draw yourself. That explains the difference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The book linked at the top of the article is a great read[1]. Very easy to follow along if you want to do a similar thing yourself.

[1] [http://neuralnetworksanddeeplearning.com/](http://neuralnetworksanddeeplearning.com/)

</comment><comment><USER15> Where is 8? I flipped the sample like 100+ times. Didn't encounter a single #8. I guess Haskell bytes back sometimes.

<comment><USER16> If this is a failing of the language, then at least blame the right one.

[http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~blynn/mnist/samples.js](http://www-cs- students.stanford.edu/~blynn/mnist/samples.js)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> this is really not a good look for haskell.</comment>


A pragmatic decision on GNU Emacs versus Vim for programming - <AUTHOR> https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/programming/CodeEditingVimVsEmacs <comment><USER2> I'm pretty happy with neovim nowadays... With Neomake, I get enough "IDE" features that I can stay productive, and it's fast enough that I don't miss Emacs' superior tools.

I don't think I can ever get used to a non-vi editor (I feel uncomfortable even browsing without vim-style shortcuts thanks to pentadactyl/vimfx), but there is one for Emacs so that is not a show-stopper.

I did in fact try Spacemacs for a while, and wanted to like it, but in the end I couldn't get rid of my muscle memory to just start new editors in terminals all the time, and Emacs' daemon mode had stability issues for me, so it wasn't very usable: either it'd crash at times or startup would be unusably slow.

Muscle memory is a powerful thing. I had to alias "vi" to "nvim" just to be able to use neovim...

<comment><USER3> Neither neovim's or vim's ecosystem is primarily (or even significantly) Lisp, though.

A fully Lisp ecosystem is one of emacs' greatest attractions, and one that neither vim nor neovim is likely to ever achieve.

<comment><USER4> Not with that attitude ;) [https://github.com/adolenc/cl- neovim](https://github.com/adolenc/cl-neovim)

<comment><USER3> Yeah, you can script vim in Lisp (Scheme to be more precise). That's been possible for a long time, with mzscheme. But virtually no one ever does.

The vim ecosystem is overwhelmingly vimscript. Python is gaining popularity, and if anything a mainstream language like that is likely what the neovim ecosystem will eventually wind up consisting of. Not Lisp.

Contrast that with emacs, where it's Lisp, Lisp, Lisp, and will continue to be Lisp for the foreseeable future (with a detour to Scheme possible in the long run).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This guy is completely correct in his decision. If you want magic, use emacs, don't try to shoehorn it into vim. One of the reasons I left vim for kakoune is that the impulse to turn vim into an IDE has led to scope creep. Vim feels huge these days, where kak does a much better job of deferring to other applications what they do well.

<comment><USER6> Precisely why I use _actual_ vi.. (well.. the nvi rewrite)

Unfortunately many current 'vi' users have never actually seen the real thing, since most linuces simply alias vi to vim.. I realias it back to nvi because every new vim distro package has a new layer of auto indenting shiny garbage I have to unfiddle before approaching actual vi..

If I want fast text hacking, I use vi. If I want fancy stuff in the sweet spot between basic editor and ide, I use emacs, and if I want vi key bindings in that sweet spot, I turn on viper/evil. Done.

<comment><USER7> vim still opens in ~250 ms (or less) on my system. I'm not sure what problems it's causing you.

<comment><USER8> I have 100++ vim plugins and get around 500ms startup because of contextual loading by neobundle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why do so many people only consider Emacs and Vim for programming? There are a plethora of IDEs that have way more features out of the box and even have plugins to make them compatible with Vim and Emacs usage so the switching cost is almost zero.

<comment><USER10> If you're talking about a statically typed language built for refactoring and static analysis like C# and Java (hopefully one day rust), you're absolutely correct, that's a game changer and you should take advantage of that.

However, the functionality quickly falls off. I do tend to keep around intellij, but mostly for the various debugger integrations, but you can quickly replace any integrations with project-wide search and replace + a decent auto suggest + compile/linting integration. That's not terribly hard to find these days in emacs, vi, vscode, sublime, etc etc, and it's only going to get easier when we start seeing language servers pop up so you can refactor from any editor!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Re: the article's last point: I've actually found Emacs to be wonderful as a "sysadmin's editor" thanks to TRAMP; I can edit a remote file on any of my servers (provided I have SSH access, which is the vast majority of the time) using my local machine's Emacs.

Even when I don't have SSH access to a machine (perhaps because sshd ain't running yet), my increasing use of OpenBSD means increasing availability of 'mg' on my servers, which further means that I don't have to leave the comfort of an Emacs-ish environment (even if I lose some of the more advanced features). It's only on my Linux machines (and on SmartOS) that I have to resort to 'vi' or 'ed' for anything, and even _that 's_ going away as more distros ship with 'nano'.

<comment><USER3> I always found directory navigation to be a pain with TRAMP and even dired. Also, I like to run various commands on remote systems and not just edit files there, so having a native shell open there is very natural for me, and emacs' terminal emulations have been very clunky in my experience and require way too much indirection in keyboard shortcuts on top of tmux and evil which I how I use emacs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is an aside, but why did the author prepend Emacs with GNU _every_ time?

From my understanding, GNU Emacs is a specific flavor of Emacs (which is a general class of editor). From wikipedia, it's the most common flavor of Emacs. Is it not generally understood that Emacs implies GNU Emacs? Would it not be sufficient to introduce the article with, "... Emacs -- specifically, GNU Emacs -- ..." and then carry on with Emacs elsewhere?

It seems needless, or even pedantic, but maybe I'm missing something?

<comment><USER13> In the modern world there basically is only GNU Emacs. The only other actively maintained editor (well, there's Linus's microemacs tree too I guess) that calls itself "emacs" is XEmacs, a long-time fork of GNU Emacs. But it's been fading steadily over the past decade and at this point very few people use it or even know about it.

Basically: yes, you can be unambiguous by just saying "emacs" and everyone who cares will know exactly what software you use. But for the same reason it's _not_ really correct anymore to use "emacs" to refer to a "general class of editor". You need to be more explicit if you're invoking historical or oddball variants.

<comment><USER12> So, why did the author make such a point of using GNU Emacs everywhere? I feel like I just read an article where the author says, "Apple's OS X" or "Microsoft Excel" over and over.

Edit: Confused about downvotes too. My question comes from a genuine place of not understanding.

<comment><USER14> Maybe he's a GNU zealot, they exist. The type to refer to Linux as GNU/Linux. ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I never liked mixing Vim and Emacs. I used both, but for different things. I use NeoVim as my terminal editor, with tmux, zsh and iTerm2. And I use it for 70% of code I write. Emacs I have Installed, GUI version, and I use it for functional programming languages, mostly Lisp, Clojure, OCaml, Haskell feel better in Emacs. So there goes other 20% of code I write in my free time mostly playing with FP, those languages that lean on REPLs are clearly better integrated into Emacs and all that FP history that is pretty relevant in considering Emacs. And 10% is when I have to write something in Java where I have to fire up IntelliJ Idea, thankfully it doesn't happen so often.

Never got into that Emacs as an OS mentality, but I can see it's appeal to someone but I didn't like it. But I am really grateful for system wide shortcuts in OS X, just C-A, C-E has saved me so much time in macOS. And yeah, Emacs made me rebind ctrl to Caps Lock, which is so good, I can't imagine how I used keyboard before this!

I like UNIX and use it for everything I can. (there is other thing on internet called UNIX as an IDE)

Edit: and oh, I forgot there are some beautiful things with Emacs like magit. I have understood git and it's concepts thanks to this emacs git interface, now I am 10 times better and I know what I am doing in terminal.

</comment><comment><USER16> This just reads like anyone who's flirted with both editors. "I'm really familiar with <editor A>, and I see the merits of <editor B> and wanted to use it, but in the end I'm very familiar with <editor A> and decided to stick with it". Not much insight here.

<comment><USER17> Actually, the author claimed to be more familiar with vi or rather that they were using vi much more yet decided to go with emacs. Pretty much the opposite of what you are saying.

<comment><USER18> No in the realm of plugins, which was the subject of the article, it's exactly how OP says: they know the Emacs plugin landscape and not the Vim one. For the relevant passage search "I'm not that person".

<comment><USER17> From the first paragraph of the article:

"The reality is that I already spend most of my editing time in vim"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> this post doesnt make sense to me, he could just run vim from emacs using evil/viper mode. perhaps he is new to emacs?

<comment><USER20> To me, running evil-mode feels like an extra layer of complexity that makes it harder to debug problems. Vim has a good support ecosystem. Emacs has a good support ecosystem. But the intersection where evil-mode lives is not a particularly robust ecosystem...debugging problems means dealing with three things: Vim, emacs in general, and evil-mode and then trying to sort out where the problem sits.</comment></comment>


Robert Pirsig, Author of 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,' Dies at 88 - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/24/books/robert-pirsig-dead-wrote-zen-and-the-art-of-motorcycle-maintenance.html <comment><USER2> Amazing talent. Unfortunate that many only know of the Zen book. His second book, Lila, which expands on the "Metaphysics of Quality" has much to offer.

</comment><comment><USER3> "And what is good, Phaedrus,

And what is not good—

Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?"</comment>


The Power of Javascript - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoq.com/presentations/vanderburg-power-of-javascript <comment><USER2> I don't know what it is about this guy, but I hate his style.

Douglas Crockford is much better:

<http://javascript.crockford.com/>

<http://javascript.crockford.com/javascript.html>

<http://yuiblog.com/blog/2007/01/24/video-crockford-tjpl/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Is this article on infoq.com plagiarised ( <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=145142> )?</comment>


NYTimes's Pogue going to Yahoo - <AUTHOR> http://pogueman.tumblr.com/post/64682813641/goodbye-and-hello <comment><USER2> Here's a post that brings out the worst in HN. Start from the top and see how far you get before you find anything positive. Here's what I hope to see i) What people think this means for YHOO. ii) What does this mean for traditional media and people attracted to web properties. iii) What might this service that he's launching look like? iv) Who else might copy/follow suit on this play?

Here's what you get I) Good riddance I hate him (real valuable) ii) Some sort of conspiracy theory about ethics and issues. iii) Character attack/insinuation with some cheesy comment about his hiring manager and Yahoo based content and iv) never forget to work congress and government in there because a guy who does quirky videos on the iPad is only one step away from journalism and government coziness.

<comment><USER3> Better watch out, if your post makes too much sense it will make it to the top and no longer make sense.

<comment><USER4> This may be the best summation of OP Syndrome I've ever encountered. Awesomely stated. I may need to quote this, but I'll give you credit when I do.

Err, sorry. What I meant to say is that, while I agree with part A of your post, part B is total garbage. In conclusion, you are 100% wrong, and in fact, you are everything that's wrong with the internet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Pogue had a LOT of ethical issues while at the Times—issues where he'd be more likely be hit simply because of his employer. This move has the effect of simultaneously giving him a bigger platform and getting him out of the eye of the watchdogs. I can see why he went to Yahoo.

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2011/06/27/will- th...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2011/06/27/will-the-ny-times- give-david-pogue-another-pass-on-ethics/)

[http://valleywag.gawker.com/nyt-tech-columnist-david- pogue-m...](http://valleywag.gawker.com/nyt-tech-columnist-david-pogue- marries-pr-flack-girlfri-503800144)

[http://www.nytpick.com/2010/01/david-pogue-breaks-nyts- ethic...](http://www.nytpick.com/2010/01/david-pogue-breaks-nyts-ethics- rules.html)

<comment><USER6> _But this paper steadfastly focuses on responsible journalism, irconclad ethics and superb writing. I'll always be a loyal ally..._

This is such an _unnatural_ sentence, it doesn't surprise me at all to see it as complete spin. Its beyond rare to pledge loyalty to a company, when you are leaving it to join a competitor. And Newspapers are so full of conflicts of interest (especially a place as politicised as NYT), that any reference to 'ethics' that is not self-serving is only by _coincidence_.

_________

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Another shining example of ethics in journalism.

If you start small, write glowing reviews of products and company directives so that you get invited to pressers and tours, and maybe someday you too can get invited to go work inside the very companies the public trusted you to cover in an unbiased fashion! Be careful though, anything under 4.5 out of 5 stars and you might get a phone call from the PR department expressing their disappointment while they take you off of their most exclusive lists.

Congresspeople who take jobs as lobbyists after their terms in office are synonymous with journalists who join companies they covered "in the public's interest" during their professional careers.

(Disclaimer: I'm not saying that this was Pogue's position re: Yahoo. This is a rampant problem in new and old media in general.)

<comment><USER8> To be fair to Pogue and Yahoo!, the latter's had a sizeable journalistic operation for years now. It's not like he's going off to work in their PR department. (Which is a thing that happens all too often, yeah)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Good riddance. Can't stand the guy. I know he attempted to make tech accessible to the average Joe, but he always dumbed things down so much I felt like he didn't really know what he was talking about. He also seemed to let personal biases get in the way of the reporting.

The real reason why I didn't like him was for what he did to Nova. Nova was one of my favorite programs growing up and he absolutely ruined it with his annoying personality, stupid jokes/puns, and over simplifications. In a science show the science should be first, not the twit talking about it.

<comment><USER10> "Good riddance. Can't stand the guy. "

I'm not sure I understand why you feel it is good for you if Pogue is leaving NYT and going to Yahoo?

If you don't like him I can understand a comment like this expressing disdain and schadenfreude because something bad happened to him. But from what is being said (by Pogue) this is a actually something good for Pogue and has no impact on you positive or negative. And has no impact on Nova (Pogue says "I'll still keep up my NOVA specials") so why the delight?

<comment><USER11> Because if he's a reader of the NYTimes, he doesn't need to see his articles anymore? Hopefully they'll replace him with someone who the commenter has a higher respect for?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It is a good move on Pogue's part, he gets to do more of the stuff he likes to do.

But the comments here, especially the dismissive ones, seem to miss out on his popularity at the Times. Granted that "popularity" != "good" for a number of things but he brought a lot of readers to the Times and that was something the Times needs if they want to stay in business.

It annoys me when people make that choice (popularity over quality, as I felt Dr. Michio Kaku did with his TV stuff) but I have come to recognize it is there choice to make.

</comment><comment><USER13> Over the past year, Pogue has reviewed Yahoo's products on many different occasions. Presumably, his hiring-managers read all of them.

It is quite likely that Pogue's reviews (e.g. great review of Flickr changes) were honest reviews and that he wasn't trying to curry favor with prospective future employers.

However, I hope that this job offer leads to more thoughts on conflicts of interest and perhaps requirements (from NYT etc) regarding journalists reviewing companies from whom they might accept job offers

<comment><USER14> I don't know how there's any real way to get around this, because if you don't let a journalist write about any company where they _might_ receive a job offer, you'll end up with a significant gap in reporting. I think that's better than the current scenario.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> "Yahoo has regained its position as the #1 most visited Web site on earth."

Is that true? Is it really visited more often than Facebook, Google, Twitter, or YouTube? Alexa doesn't agree[1].

According to a recent article[2], Yahoo is the most popular website in 2 regions: Japan and Hong Kong.

[1] [http://www.alexa.com/topsites](http://www.alexa.com/topsites)

[2] [http://www.fastcocreate.com/3019595/creativity-by-the- number...](http://www.fastcocreate.com/3019595/creativity-by-the-numbers/see- a-map-of-the-world-revealing-each-countrys-most-visited-websit)

<comment><USER16> Yep. [https://www.google.com/search?q=yahoo+most+visited](https://www.google.com/search?q=yahoo+most+visited)

It's Yahoo properties, not Yahoo.com. Big boost: they bought Tumblr.

<comment><USER15> From the first result:

"Yahoo ranks as the most-visited website in the U.S., according to the latest report from ComScore" (So: 'US', not 'the world')

and: "Traffic to Tumblr [...] did not contribute to Yahoo's overall traffic number[...] Tumblr ranked as the 28th most popular U.S. property" (Again, just the US, and not even that popular)

[http://www.informationweek.com/cloud- computing/software/yaho...](http://www.informationweek.com/cloud- computing/software/yahoo-trumps-google-as-most-visited-webs/240160303)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is big news, Pogue was/is one of the most important tech writer in my own opinion. He has a good approach of dumbing down tech products for the average joe despite beeing very knowledgeable.

I guess it is showing a shift from Yahoo to be a quality content producer.

</comment><comment><USER18> To offset the negative top comments - I actually really like Pogue - his posts in the nytimes tech at least. He seems to understand the products he's using well enough to do a good job without getting so geeky or over concerned about minutia that it would alienate the lay person. I of course have my other sources for that, but I do check in on the nytimes tech section regularly.

</comment><comment><USER19> I wonder if he'll work remotely. ;)

I never understood the appeal of this guy, nor his qualifications. Both he and Mossberg were woefully non-technical for technical reviewers.

<comment><USER20> Writing about technology for newspapers is a tough gig. You aren't just writing for us geeks. You have to write for grandpa who refuses to get a cell phone, for the boss who doesn't see a reason to upgrade a fax machine, for the mere mortals who _need_ technology "dumbed down." Not because they are dumb but because don't have a foundation of knowledge to build on -- or interest in gaining that foundation.

Though I did stop reading anything from Kim Komando once she explained how a floppy drive worked, and she got all the facts wrong. (That was long enough ago that someone might explain how a floppy disk worked.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Pogue is an okay journalist, but great at building a personal brand, which now extends to books and the conference circuit as well as writing.

I spent seven years as an editor at top NYC magazines, and saw time and again that great journalists - even great brand-builders - aren't usually great at creating and managing new ventures. There are exceptions, though, and I hope Pogue is one of them.

</comment><comment><USER22> Since Microsoft is so "popular" today on HN, have you seen Pogue's hands-on review of Windows 8.1 yet?

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=u-vDf...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=u-vDf7hTXo0)

<comment><USER23> How is that a review? I don't follow the Times or Pogue, but this was not anything I'd expect from a "hands-on review."

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> "... plus they gave me a ton of money."

</comment><comment><USER25> Here is an argument for why the hated David Pogue writes about technology the way he does, and why it resonates: [http://podcasts.infoworld.com/print/69418](http://podcasts.infoworld.com/print/69418)

I haven't read much from him since I was a kid, when I had a copy of Macworld Mac & Power Mac Secrets and was stuffing the book's 3.25" floppies into my Powermac 6100 to use ResEdit, but I especially remember the prose being engaging even apart from the interesting tricks and hacks the book covered. In his book computers lived in a world with people, rather than in a universe unto themselves, so I learned a little extra.

Scanning through a few columns again, the writing is no less clear, and even though I generally care about how something works rather than how well, no less correct. And on areas where I have no insider experience or information, like cell phone billing practices, the writing was suprisingly helpful and entertaining: [http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/10/t-mobile-hands- con...](http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/10/t-mobile-hands-consumers-a- pleasant-shocker/)

This is a serious move from Yahoo. Given the sort of demographic that reads the New York Times and buys tech books, Yahoo must have paid Pogue a lot to have him switch from New York Times columnist David Pogue to Yahoo! columnist David Pogue. I wonder who will be next.

</comment><comment><USER26> Yahoo calling itself the "world's biggest startup" seems like a superlative example of bad faith. It is hard to take companies (or people, for that matter) seriously, when they openly claim to be something they know they aren't.

Similarly, Pogue's content is full of inaccuracies, gross over-simplification, leading conclusions, and ignorance beyond what can be considered excusable. I suppose he'll be right at home at the "world's biggest startup".

<comment><USER27> As best I can tell, Mayer believes deeply in reflexivity, which might not actually be a bad strategy. Probably figures if she repeats claims like this over and over again, and make a couple acquisitions that kinda-maybe-sorta insinuate that it's different this time, peoples' opinions on Yahoo will turn around and with it Yahoo's fortunes. I'm sure deep down she knows she's peddling bullshit though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Once your personal brand gets well known, it's leaving money on the table to just be an employee at a business in a declining industry like newspapers.

</comment><comment><USER29> At the end of the day one of Yahoo's primary strenghts is being a curator of information and bringing in Pogue in my opinion will improve this core competency or atleast make it seem like it does.

</comment><comment><USER30> Another marker in the deathbed of traditional print journalism. Add this to Bezos' purchase of the Washington Post, the departure of Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg from the WSJ, and you have indications that tech media is going to diverge and likely eclipse traditional media, the disruption will be complete.

It used to be that internet media was playing in print media's game, but now the situation is reversing, and the weaker (either in content or profitability) outfits will go by the wayside.

This isn't necessarily a good thing, but it will happen.

</comment><comment><USER31> The key question for me is if it's ethical for a tech company to own a tech site? And that's what I assume he'd be doing. Can you really trust the editorial coverage — and tech users are pretty aware of that sort of thing. Or maybe nobody cares: After all Fox news outlets no doubt give press to Fox entertainment properties like their films — but it's sort of sad to me.

<comment><USER32> You would think everybody with a shred of conscience at cnet would quit after the DirecTV Hopper debacle but that didn't happen. cnet still exists and people still work there.

> "CNET is not going to give an award or any other validation to a product > which CBS is challenging as illegal, other networks believe to be illegal > and one court has already found to violate the copyright act in its > application. Beyond that, CNET will cover every other product and service on > the planet," a CBS spokesperson said.[0]

USA Today questioned CNET's as well as CBS' credibility going forward:

> CBS, once called the Tiffany network, will never be viewed again as > pristine. The ethical media rule is that corporate business interests should > never interfere in journalism – or at least not so blatantly, publicly and > harmfully. It made me wonder if 60 Minutes had ever suffered the same > treatment.[1]

Why does CBS still exist? Why does CBS get a free pass simply for being the second largest broadcaster in the world? Why aren't we actively boycotting everything CBS lays its slimy hands on?

I am sad to conclude that your conclusion is correct. Nobody cares. Once you are big enough, you know you can get away with certain things.

[0] [http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57566906-93/cea-gives- dish-...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57566906-93/cea-gives-dish-hopper- with-sling-best-of-show-award/)

[1] [http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/01/30/cbs-cnet- ce...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/01/30/cbs-cnet-ces-hopper- sling/1877291/)

<comment><USER31> Actually you just sort of encouraged me: Nobody actually takes CNET seriously anymore and CBS itself is a shadow of what it was once upon a time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> "So I was intrigued when Yahoo invited me to help build a new consumer-tech site."

should read

"So I was intrigued when Yahoo showed me how zeroes can fit on a check.

</comment><comment><USER34> >> Yahoo is getting 12,000 résumés a week from would-be employees.

Are there really 12,000 _new_ applicants per week that would even be remotely qualified? Even if only half of those are technical job applicants, I find that hard to believe. Resume spam from everyone who's unemployed.

<comment><USER35> Yes, definitely. Google gets over a million applications per year as of 3 years ago [1]; it's feasible that Yahoo would get half of that now.

[1]

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Mossberg leaving the Journal, Pogue leaving the Times.

Tech coverage on traditional media must be a dwindling business.

<comment><USER37> Sadly, I think that traditional media itself is a dwindling business, not just the tech coverage .:(

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Wonder if he'll be able to work from home?

</comment><comment><USER39> Some how he will manage to ruin yahoo</comment>


Keep VR Open–Lessons from Developing an Open Source VR System - <AUTHOR> https://www.fictiv.com/resources/spotlight/hardware-lessons-from-dodocase-diy-virtual-reality

<comment><USER2> Should keep be changed to help in this case? Because, according to the current wording it says we should stop them from making an Open Source VR system?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the input, don't think we can change the title at this point though. Are you working with any VR systems right now?

<comment><USER2> I have an oculus rift development kit but I am not really doing anything with it.</comment></comment></comment>


Creeping Up on Riemann  - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sciencenews.org/mathtrek/2008/04/creeping_up_on_riemann.html

<comment><USER2> I always find these articles on mathematics pretty dissatisfying. It's just not possible to describe the math, except through metaphor and hand-waving. It's a pity: things like this look fascinating from the outside, but I have neither the time nor the talent to learn the math involved. So I'll always be reading along, thinking "that's a nice metaphor. Wonder if it has any connection to the real stuff"</comment>


Why developing for Android sucks - <AUTHOR> http://www.webosroundup.com/2010/04/why-developing-for-android-sucks/

<comment><USER2> This article is citing a lot of out of date information (unsurprising, since its 9 months old). I suppose that the article should be taken with a grain of salt given the source anyway, but just a heads up on a few:

a)the Wired article that says 70% are still on 1.5/6 is from 9 months ago. Figures from November 2010 indicate that 75% of users are running 2.1/2.2: [http://gizmodo.com/5679410/over-70-of-android-phones-are- now...](http://gizmodo.com/5679410/over-70-of-android-phones-are-now-running- eclair-or-froyo)

b) Google has since implemented some antipiracy measures on the app store.I'm less certain about its details/market penetration, but it exists in some form

c) android now has a lot more than 10 million handsets.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know if the information being out of date matters in this case, the problems of OS version fragmentation still remain.

Android antipiracy measures are extremely brittle and rely on server-side verification, this has been circumvented by decompiling app archives, patching them and rebuilding them, which is entirely possible using apktool or your decompiler of choice. Frankly im surprised that the platform isnt _crawling_ with malware.

<comment><USER2> I wouldn't deny that fragmentation is an issue, although from my (limited) personal experience the biggest issue has been designing for all the different screen sizes/resolutions and still having your app look okay.

And yes, any antipiracy mechanism can be circumvented. That said, 90+% of android users probably dont have the knowhow to grab the apk, decompile it, and remove the server side check. And I'm not sure on this last bit, but I know at least in the US some carriers (ATT) disable installing apps that aren't from the appstore. I haven't read about the details of the antipiracy mechanism, so I can't really say more than that.

Also, its unclear to me if you're linking the fact that theyre so easily decompiled/cracked and that you're surprised it isnt crawling with malware.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Good article (apart from advocating developing for Palm??), bad title. It should be called "Why distributing your Android app sucks." No commentary on actual app development itself. My thoughts on that are that Google should develop an IDE for Android developers - Eclipse is unstable bloatware, the Android emulator sucks and supporting different screen sizes and resolutions is odious to say the least.

<comment><USER3> People often repeat that Eclipse is "unstable." I can use one Eclipse process for weeks, even months on-end with JVMs from Sun and IBM on Linux, and it never crashes or needs a restart (except if installing new plug-ins). The ADK tools don't have the polish of the core features, and I haven't used them as much as other tools, but what's causing instability?

<comment><AUTHOR> I've had serious problems with Eclipse's autocomplete/intellisense prediction feature. It often begins listing identifiers and then just hangs indefinitely. I don't know if the fact I'm developing using the Windows build is significant - it is Java after all so it should be platform agnostic.

I seem to have bad luck with IDE's though. I develop using Visual Studio 2008 and that has some horrendous problems, though VS was never known for stability (six service packs for VS6, anyone?)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Over the Air updates. If you have a Palm phone you will be on the latest > version that your carrier has available

I wonder what happens when you use an unlocked phone on a foreign telco. Will it get upgraded using Palm's servers?

</comment><comment><USER5> Some of the points are only valid if your revenue model is a paid app. How about a free app + paid service?

<comment><AUTHOR> If piracy is as big a problem on Android as the article claims, the free client/paid subscription model is probably the most viable way to generate revenue. However, Android is not proprietary software-friendly - It's INSANELY easy to decompile APK archives and reverse engineer content.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Interesting. How vibrant is the dev community for Palm phones?

OTA Updates are another story on Android. Different manufacturers price OS updates differently like Samsung, who price them as feature updates whereas some other Android phone manufacturers price them as cheaper maintenance upgrades. It can be a bit of a lottery as to whether your phone will ever receive an upgrade.

<comment><USER6> I'm part of the WebOS dev community and its small but growing. I've sat on the fence for a while because I wasn't sure where Palm would be a year ago. And while I found the interface to be the best in the smartphone space (sorry iOS) the hardware it was deployed on was deplorable.

They are moving from Mojo (javascript based) to Enyo (C++ based) platform so quite a few developers are also waiting for the new SDK. Most of the apps that are currently written in Mojo will continue to work but I sense that most developers are in the same boat I am. No point in learning a framework that has one foot in the grave when the next one is right around the corner.

<comment><USER7> Enyo is NOT a C++ platform. There's a C++ "plugin development kit" that's been out for a couple months now and AFAIK that doesn't change when Enyo gets introduced. I didn't really look, not particularly interested in WebOS C++ development.

Enyo is a palm-developed js framework originally created by the Ares editor team that performs (reportedly) dramatically better on the same hardware than Mojo. I believe the difference is that Enyo uses a javascript layout system a la Sproutcore/Cappuccino instead of the html+css layout in Mojo so they're basically innerHTMLing everything instead of performing a bunch of DOM manipulations/reflows. I'd expect a number of other changes but aside from that and allowing multiple-layouts (i.e. for tablets) that's all I came away with from the developer day talk on it.

I started looking into WebOS when CES was going because I was wondering at Palm's absence. It turns out that the homebrew community is surprisingly vibrant and they have (basically) an independent market app (preware) for their apps and patches. I was most impressed by the patching. The entire interface is interpreted, so changing how things work is just a matter of modifying the appropriate javascript and rebooting the device.

All in all, I was impressed enough to get a developer account and start intermittently hacking apps. Enyo isn't out but it'll have to come out soon in order to handle tablet layouts so I'm heistant to commit to a Mojo app before the big Feb 9 event. I don't know about a webos phone (google apps+NewsRob+Kindle on android do basically everything I want to do with a phone) but I'll definitely be getting a WebOS tablet for reading/development.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What about free + admob? Angry Birds is free on Android, but uses Ads to support it. Being the top free game on the platform, this means they probably do a lot of money with it.

<comment><USER9> Rovio specifically said that they went Ad-supported on Android because NONE of the top apps were paid, and they didn't think they'd make much money with a paid app. There was a lot of talk about make a paid version without ads, but it never appeared.</comment></comment>


Docker isn't serverless - <AUTHOR> https://serverlesscode.com/post/docker-isnt-serverless/ <comment><USER4> "Well, serverless isn't really a technique for building distributed apps - it's about building useful apps"

"But serverless doesn't mean there is no Docker – in fact, Docker is serverless."

Yet another case where it's clear that "serverless" is a harmful term. Everybody means something else by it and there's no wonder that posts like this surface.

Yes, Docker is not serverless, because it runs on a server, like your lambda functions.

<comment><USER5> The idea that words themselves can be harmful is ridiculous. People create and use words. The people who say words can be harmful, if they are presenting facts in the way they see them, as opposed to the way they are observed in reality. Stop attacking words and start addressing those who use them in a harmful and dissonance creating way.

The reason people become polarized over a given subject, especially when it's boiled down to a single term, is because we all have different perceptions based on our roles and responsibilities. The term "serverless" can be applied to the _users_ of a given application. Gmail is "serverless" for me, but not Google. For Google ops, Gmail is definately "server" based. Flipping terms, by those who seek additional resources for themselves, their company and their limited partners, is simply a means to hide the truth of the matter behind running their software.

To achieve infrastructure which is trustworthy and not owned by self, we must implement trusted architectures which can adapt to changing conditions and provide fault tolerance to a given level for an immediate cost. Docker has barely scratched the surface of what must be done to address these architectural requirements. The unfortunate bit is that their business model is likely to take them in the opposite direction of where we need to go with all this. That's just the way innovation works when it's driven by VC capital.

<comment><USER4> There are harmful words in use, but obviously it needs a user base to spread, the two can't live without each other. I'm not talking about swear words, but words that offend or misinform people or summarize a concept that can be harmful or generate controversy. Take web 2.0 for example. It caused quite a stir because nobody was sure what's 1.0 vs 2.0 was, then it faded away. I consider homeopathy a harmful word too. It sounds innocent, memorable and somewhat legit, but it's a dangerous thing.

I think that if many people point out that a word is pointless, inaccurate and deceptive, then that user base can fade too, therefore it makes sense to attack the word and not go ad hominem on the users.

> Gmail is "serverless" for me, but not Google.

Thanks for bringing this up, for me as a user, gmail is nothing but a webapp for an email server. So is SaaS a better category for it or serverless? Without net connection (to a server) it's pretty useless. Even from the user point of view it's not clear what the term should cover.

After all, we should focus on the technology, because that's promising at least.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Kudos to the author for writing this. Serverless is a thing, but Docker definitely isn't it. Nor is AWS lambda.

Serverless is client-only code, or even Peer-to-Peer between self-coordinating clients.

There's a lot of stuff that overlaps in this domain, including microservices, containers, serverless, and if we want to talk about them we should use the right terminology.

<comment><USER7> _> Serverless is client-only code, or even Peer-to-Peer between self- coordinating clients._

That's a valid definition but it's just one of many. The Function-as-a-Service has also been called _" serverless"_.

Your definition of "serverless" demarcates on _where_ the code runs.

The FaaS "serverless"[1] differentiates on _what part of the stack_ you don't have to manage the housekeeping for. With FaaS-serverless, you don't worry about upgrading a particular Linux kernel version if you can decompose a computation into a function that runs on AWS Lambda. So, deploy computation to the cloud _without the Linux server_ embedded inside an image (AMI) -- and it seems natural for a bunch of human beings to call that "serverless".

Likewise, the "server" in X Window X11 is the display services to differentiate it from the "client" of a terminal app.[2]

All 3 meanings of "server/serverless" can coexist without confusion and it doesn't seem like terminology we have to bikeshed. Personally, the context surrounding serverless always makes it clear what we're talking about. Is anyone truly confused between SQLite being "serverless" and AWS Lambda being "serverless" because they happen to use the same word?

As for Ryan Scott Brown's definition of "serverless", is there near universal consensus on his criteria?

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Function_as_a_Service](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Function_as_a_Service)

[2][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Window_System#Software_archi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Window_System#Software_architecture)

<comment><USER6> I think the deeper we go into this discussion the more philosophically ambiguous it gets.

If I think of the most basic, abstract definition of a server I can, I'd say it's a piece of software at a known location outside of the client process, to which a client goes to transmit a message (and optionally have future messages back and forth in the same "session").

I would say Lambda is not serverless because it depends on software outside of the client process, and I know where it is.

X is not serverless because the client process is separate from the server.

SQLite is serverless because my process is calling the sqlite library.

Torrenting initially has a server (clients need a way to find peers) but very quickly becomes serverless.

So I'd say my definition isn't about where it runs, but who is running it and in what context.

That's my thoughts on it anyway.

<comment><USER7> _> If I think of the most basic, abstract definition of a server I can, I'd say it's a piece of software at a known location outside of the client process,_

But you're trying to reduce it down to a perfect singular definition. English doesn't work like that and we'll just end up in contradictions as I will demonstrate further down in my comment.

 _> I would say Lambda is not serverless because it depends on software outside of the client process, and I know where it is._

Right... and I acknowledged and agreed that _your_ particular definition of serverless doesn't include Lambda. However, I can also explain why _others_ call deployment without-the-Linux-kernel as "serverless". I guess a different chain of memes might have resulted in alternative terminology such as "Linuxless" computations or "os-free" functions but somehow the word "serverless" gained currency.

 _> SQLite is serverless because my process is calling the sqlite library._

So what if my web browser submits a REST API call to a web server that uses SQLite as it's backend? Is SQLite the "db server"? Yes and no. It depends on _which_ definition of "server/serverless". (Machine location vs os in- process/out-of-process)

If we insist on 1 definition, we will have contradictions.

<comment><USER8> > If we insist on 1 definition, we will have contradictions.

And if we keep on using catch-all buzzwords such as "serverless", it makes words void of any real meaning.

<comment><USER9> Serverless has a very definite meaning to me if I'm tired of administering Linux servers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I can understand why people try to come up with a definitive definition of "serverless" but....

"Serverless" is an adjective.

Adjectives are used to provide auxiliary meaning to the noun it's attached to, which means it depends on context.

It could be a "serverless website", it could be a "serverless hosting", it could even be a "serverless diner"!

<comment><USER11> It's funny to watch people debate the meaning of this word as though it's some rigorously technical term that has been around forever. It's just the latest buzz word for the latest evolution in simplifying/hiding operations from developers.

<comment><USER10> From marketing point of view, I think it's the best naming ever, since it makes people talk about it more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Ugh, of all the jargon the dev world has come up with serverless is the worst - if it runs on another computer it is not server less.

<comment><USER13> I think it's an inside joke:

2 people bet each other a dollar they could take a fundamentally simple concept and wax poetic insanity around it until the text was so insane no one could actually read through it - so people just shrug, wash the virtual slime off and move on. Their will power so drained by reading the BS they can't even be bothered to complain.

Then comes the fake accounts to gush how 'serverless' and 'function-as-a- service' are completely new and different and awesomer bra.

The next bet will probably be "mathematicsless": how we solve collision detection without math - and you should too!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Just call it "cloud". That's already a meaningless catch-all term that covers everything.

<comment><USER15> Whenever I hear serverless, I think of

[http://dilbert.com/strip/2015-12-20](http://dilbert.com/strip/2015-12-20)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> "serverless" is a new term that people have been using in tons of different ways. To the author, frankly I don't think you get to say what's serverless and what isn't. I think only point 1 is agreed upon - the rest is up in the air. Point 3: that it must be function-as-a-service: I dont agree there. Counter-point: if your backend is google sheets, or plain S3, it's certainly serverless.

Docker? Maybe. Depends how it's architected. I get that they're trying to latch onto the up-and-coming big movement, but since that big term has no definition, they have as much right as the author to claim to belong to it.

<comment><USER17> > if your backend is [...] S3, it's certainly serverless

Is it really serverless if you have to configure the web server serving the files? If you have to manage ACLs, regional distribution, compression, CDN mirroring, versioning, DNS...

If you move to Lambda, you're also tossing in the API gateway configuration, Kenesis streams, datastores, IAM permissions and roles, throttling behavior, scheduled tasks, VPCs, subnets...

Just because you're not starting and stopping the processes doesn't mean you're not managing the server.

/devilsadvocate

<comment><USER18> The things that actually fits best with the new serverless term is - <USER2> hosting. Just FTP some PHP files into a directory, and it's running.

Excuse me, I'm off to sell my marketing consultation services to GoDaddy and Hostgator.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I kind of feel that Erlang programmers are shaking their heads in frustration at all this and saying "we've been doing things this way since the 80s and saying they're great but nobody listens".

</comment><comment><USER20> How could someone claim docker is serverless? It's pretty much the definition of server.

It's servermore if anything.

</comment><comment><USER21> "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo"

That's pretty much all I'm seeing in the comments, just with "Serverless" instead.

<comment><USER22> If I'm not mistaken, congratulations on getting the capitalization just right there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Only if you forget to pay your hosting bills do your services become serverless.

</comment><comment><USER24> Serverless is a word that only has meaning within the existing paradigms of web development. A "Server" is nothing more than a metaphor for a machine with stuff a "client" (another machine) can request. Everyone acts confused/amazed at what is essentially semantics for describing infinitely more complex systems.

It's the same process with any buzzword. They're terms that are so all- encompassing that, yeah, every sensible, modern project operating in a related space could probably be described by them. Like horoscopes for engineering.

</comment><comment><USER25> As an avid Docker user and also a user of AWS Lambda my only reactive when seeing this article is... "This wasn't obvious already?"

Reading the article I can see how it can be construed to be serverless but it is a real stretch.

I don't agree with other posters that the only true serverless is client-only technology. P2P has its place and is generally awesome but I feel that distributing your app as small functions that can run on distributed systems where you don't know or care what hardware or OS is underneath is a compelling definition in lack of a better word.

</comment><comment><USER26> > In the demo, a new container is created for every function invocation which > would introduce latency that wouldn't really be acceptable for most user- > facing systems.

That seems like an implementation issue that can be overcome, an alternative approach could be to spin up a few containers, deploy the function artefact/JAR/script/whatever and then continuously invoke it via a load balancer.

Then if the function isn't called for a while, terminate or scale down the container(s)

I believe AWS lambda works in a similar way to the above approach.

</comment><comment><USER27> A PaaS is not serverless either. We embrace the fluidity of language because that is the pragmatic choice, but using counter-intuitive terms with misleading semantics is not pragmatic so we should reject such terms instead of muddling the meaning of well established terms of art.

Everyone can pretty much agree on what constitutes a "server" so I don't see why we should use confusing terms that belie our shared understanding of this term.

</comment><comment><USER28> Serverless isn't serverless either - it's pretending someone else's server doesn't exist.

</comment><comment><USER29> I think serverless has bad semantics for it's new connotation (which doesn't even seem to be universally agreed upon). Maybe we should just focus on value, not paying for more infrastructure than you need, and building useful things. Maybe we could just call it practical?

<comment><USER30> I was going to make a comment about how doing that would mean we couldn't get to the next phase of the cycle, when we start talking about "serverless microservices". Then I saw we're already there[1], and died a little on the inside.

[1] [https://gun.io/blog/serverless-microservices-with-zappa- and-...](https://gun.io/blog/serverless-microservices-with-zappa-and-flask/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Related recently published podcast: [http://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2016/08/23/serverless- ar...](http://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2016/08/23/serverless-architecture- with-mike-roberts/)

<comment><USER32> I also was on SEDaily a while back on the same topic [http://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2016/06/20/serverless- co...](http://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2016/06/20/serverless-code-ryan- scott-brown/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Sounds like ol' Murky and ilk is at it again...

</comment><comment><USER34> To me Servlerless is a PaaS model, but more specifically a payment model on top of a PaaS model.

</comment><comment><USER35> I agree that Docker is not serverless, but I think that it does replace the need for serverless services if coupled with an orchestrator such as Kubernetes, Swarm or Mesos.

The first bullet point in the article is true when taken in its entirety but it's also misleading because using Docker with an orchestrator like Kubernetes does significantly reduce the need for maintenance - You do have to design your apps in a particular way (so that they can auto-scale themselves - <USER3> this is no small feat) but once you do, it's really easy on the maintenance side. I think it's a matter of time before open source projects start to become 'built for Kubernetes' \- I already did this with my own project [https://github.com/SocketCluster/socketcluster](https://github.com/SocketCluster/socketcluster) and I know lots of big open source developers who are also doing the same. Kubernetes/Swarm/Mesos are becoming 'cloud' operating systems - Once their popularity reaches a critical threshold, developers will build apps on top of Kubernetes or Swarm in the same way that developers today build apps to run on Linux or OSX.

Eventually, when people ask "What OS does your software run on?", the most common answer will probably be "Kubernetes" or "Swarm" \- Instead of saying "Linux", "OSX" or "Windows".

The second point is also correct when taken literally but also misleading. While Docker doesn't use third-party services to reduce the amount of code... It does allow you to use third-party Docker images to reduce the amount of code... Same result, different approach. I think the second approach is better (and cheaper sine you don't have to pay ongoing costs).

The third point makes sense but the concept of 'lambda functions' is completely redundant in a self-orchestrated Docker environment. Lambda functions were invented to fix a problem which BaaS introduced - By the very fact that it doesn't offer you direct access to the backend. In my opinion, Lambdas are not as good a solution as having your own backend code running in auto-orchestrated containers (Lambdas often have lots of limits related to resource usage, timeouts, including third-party modules, etc...).

I think that until now, BaaS providers have had the upper hand because they're really easy to use, but I'm certain that Docker/Kubernetes/Mesos will win out in the end for the simple fact that they are decentralized, that they are way more flexible, that they leverage open source technology and that ultimately they will cost much less (because of their high flexibility, customizability and composability).

There are lots of great teams building new platforms on top of Docker which will make it easier to use than BaaS.

<comment><USER36> I totally agree with your comment. I think that the potential of container schedulers will start showing and will become popular.

Martin Fowler defined serverless as "bringing entire applications up and down for every request". [http://martinfowler.com/articles/serverless.html](http://martinfowler.com/articles/serverless.html)

I don't think that this is what we do with containers, they mostly stay active when there are no requests since they take more than 20ms to boot up.

<comment><USER18> Thing is, it's not what Amazon does with Lambda either; so if the prime example of serverless, isn't, what is?

[https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/container-reuse-in- lamb...](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/container-reuse-in-lambda/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Serverless just means PaaS, right?

</comment><comment><USER37> I would consider a project in Docker serverless _if_ it is used in something like AWS EC2 Container Service (ECS).

<comment><USER38> Why? Even with ECS the container's host is maintained by _you_. It's hardly more "serverless" (less serverful?) than just running docker on EC2.

<comment><USER37> Hmmmm perhaps my definition of serverless is non-standard :) My thinking is that if you just have an endpoint that you can throw a container at, or something like RDS for databases, then that's serverless enough for me (at least it takes out a huge operations cost, especially for smaller companies). But I get that it's not true 'servless' in compared to lambda etc.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Can Artificial Intelligence be used to mine Ethereum faster? - <AUTHOR> Is that possible to improve mining eth hit rate with machine learning? Mine with AI faster? <comment><USER2> No, it's not possible, because the hash algorithm is not predictable (by design)

In order to mine some eth, you have to be able to solve the KECCAK-256 hash, and the difficulty is modified by setting a number of prefixed 0's that have to be present in the solution.

This is done by hashing strings, and eventually you will get an acceptable hash, but there is not a predictable relationship between the input string and the output hash, if there was, the entire process would be useless and blockchains wouldn't work.

In order for AI to be able to make mining faster, the Deep network would have to be able to take the hash and predict the input string, but this is impossible

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not sure how that would work, without breaking the encryption the mining process relies on... but then it's not "faster", just "broken".

</comment><comment><USER4> No, it's not. You might want to look into the theory behind hash puzzles to understand better why this is the case.</comment>


An spanish blogger writes a letter to the newspapers that benefit fromwikileaks - <AUTHOR> http://elteleoperador.blogspot.com/2010/12/los-periodicos-del-cablegate.html

<comment><USER2> It would only be fair. I'd like to see someone try to pull the same kind of thing with NY Times, Le Monde, Der Spiegel etc. as they were doing to wikileaks. It's much easier to go after Assage and his organization.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's why i pointed this place , i think it's a great idea. Cause it's funny read things like this: [http://www.voanews.com/english/news/usa/US-Government- Works-...](http://www.voanews.com/english/news/usa/US-Government-Works-to- Break-Down-Virtual-Walls-88476832.html) <http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=2228062></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Idea March - <AUTHOR> EDIT: HN experiment. Every Month, a thread will be started to share product ideas. Why? Because many people have ideas they will simply not have the time to implement, and many need product ideas to work on. <comment><USER2> __This is the list of my ideas: __

    * A multiplayer online mobile game where the player who clicks more on the screen in 2min wins

      * An app so drivers notice you when there is no lights in the streets(happens in my country) by changing screen color and blinking the flashlight

      * A website to search youtube videos by subtitles(useful for those mixing music with words said by people): see barakdubs on youtube

      * A website to learn **speaking** english and practicing pronunciation using parts of youtube videos where some words are being said

      * Curated lists websites maker such as: startupstash

      * Sharekit.io for pictures instead of links

      * An app to tell you how white your teeth are and if you're doing a good job brushing(using one pic per week or something)

      * An app to help those who have a lisp(talk funny) solve this speech issue

      * An app that tell you how good your posture is and what postural problems you have from your pics

</comment><comment><USER3> It was done before and it didn't work. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8613446](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8613446)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Will it work as once per month thread? I hope we can try once again on monthly basis. I am editing title to Idea March.

<comment><USER4> It didn't fail, it was shut down [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7693262](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7693262)

<comment><USER5> You know, I kind-of agree with that post. There's no rules against posting "Hey HN, what do you think of this idea?" which is essentially the same thing.

I think there is value in having a consolidation of these threads, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> declutter moving service. We come over to help you pack up your home, but we ask you if you want to keep everything before we pack it.

<comment><USER7> Really nice. I think with the right marketing, there could be huge market for this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> where should I eat tonight - pulls a list of all the resturants in your location, and randomly gives them to you you can say yay or nay.</comment>


Yahoo and Oracle strike deal affecting JRE installation - <AUTHOR> http://www.javaworld.com/article/2940491/java-platform/how-the-next-java-update-could-make-yahoo-your-default-search-provider.html?phint=newt%3Dinfoworld_java&phint=idg_eid%3Da79df09f1a33afcf65306fe23bf4aadd#tk.IFWNLE_ifw_java_2015-06-26

<comment><USER2> The only positive here is that Yahoo! is better than Ask, and maybe--just maybe--it'll just be a change to the default search provider, rather than the installation of yet another lousy toolbar (YALT).</comment>


Cyber threats forecast for 2011 released - <AUTHOR> http://news.bioscholar.com/2010/10/cyber-threats-forecast-for-2011-released.html

<comment><USER2> Completely useless 20/20 hindsight. ENISA's emerging cyber threats document, for example, which circulated 3-4 years ago iirc had pointed out targeted attacks on physical infrastructure (wink, wink) as a possibility, as well as other issues which were disclosed in this and last year's BlackHat and DEFCON conferences.</comment>


We're Shutting the Offices and Going Virtual: An Experiment - <AUTHOR> http://blog.inc.com/archives/2010/02/going_virtual.html

<comment><USER2> I don't think a month is nearly enough time to form any judgements. From personal experience, it takes about a year to really learn how to work out of an office.

Multiply this by an entire office and they're in for a world of hurt. To really successfully pull this off, they'd need a couple of fascists who already knew how to work remotely, people would need to defer to them, and they'd need a serious transition period to get used to all the tools they'll need (ie: work a day or two per week remotely).

The biggest problem they have, though, is one of measuring success. They don't really say what a successful experiment's going to look like. It's easy enough to measure writer output (quantity, not necessarily quantity), but most other facets of the business aren't quite as measurable. Even the success of writers is ultimately determined by the number of eyeballs on their stories. It's awfully hard to measure that stuff with any kind of reliability over the course of a month.

The best possible tool we've found for this is IRC. I assume Campfire would work reasonably well, but it's awfully simple to find bots that speak IRC and do useful things.

<comment><AUTHOR> These are great suggestions--and good points about the limitations. Thanks! Do you think IRC is superior to other IM clients? A lot of folks in the offices have never used IM before--and may be more comfortable with something like AIM or GChat.

<comment><USER3> +1 to group chat over IM for company use.

Skype has excellent group-chat, that's what we use. Much easier to adopt than IRC for non-tech types, and it's free which is a bonus.

(I didn't even know Skype had a chat feature, let alone group-chat, until I got to my current job.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I call BS; $10 says they won't exist by summer. Initiatives like this are usually announced when it's time to cut costs. While a virtual office can be a wonderful thing, it imposes significant problems too: how are you going to train new hires? existing issues can perhaps be handled by teleconferencing, but do you really want to have brainstorming sessions and involved discussions about future strategy via IM (or whatever)? How do you keep your contributors from thinking to themselves 'I'm practically freelance anyway' or handle the work-life balance issues?

I'm not saying it can't work - I've been an enthusiast and advocate for telecommuting ever since I got a modem. But it's not a panacea, and it doesn't work in every employment context. Color me very skeptical.

<comment><AUTHOR> To clarify: This is not a cost-cutting measure--and it wasn't introduced by managers. (I, humble writer that I am, proposed it.) It's a month-long editorial experiment that I will be writing about in the April issue of Inc. magazine. But yes, we will have to face all of these issues you describe. Hopefully that's what will make the story interesting. Would love to hear your thoughts on what you think will be the pain points. (I'm at mchafkin at Inc dot com).

<comment><USER4> Well, in that case I have to eat my words, and wish you luck with it - I'm afraid I'm so skeptical of management-speak that I read your Inc. article as a CYA. I'll shoot you a brief email during the afternoon, and apologize for my skepticism.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder if that is like cheating in a sense? I would think it's easier to work with people remotely who you have built relationships with. You understand them, you have seen how they operate in person and gain insights beyond what is spoken/written and have a certain common culture. I work with outsourcing/offshoring and now work remotely with a partner who used to be local. I don't think it would work if we hadn't spent all the face-to-face time first.

</comment><comment><USER6> Hasn't ArsTechnica operated in such a fashion for it's entire history?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure. But the experiment is about taking a company culture that is built on face to face contact (and moving around a bunch of printed pages) and taking it virtual. Should be interesting to see what happens.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting experiment, but I wish they had a feed just for these stories, as I don't want to pick through all the Inc stuff.</comment>


Did democracy cause World War II? - <AUTHOR> http://themonarchist.blogspot.com/2008/08/churchill-on-great-war.html

<comment><USER2> WWI/II was just the chickens coming home to roost.</comment>


Machine Learning for Middle Schoolers (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2017/05/machine-learning-for-middle-schoolers/ <comment><USER2> I'd imagine it's a lot easier and more effective to teach middle schools basic probability first. All you need is a coin or a deck of cards to introduce them to real world examples.

<comment><USER3> Not to mention that machine learning without at least some probabilistic intuition is asking for trouble in many applications.

<comment><USER4> for image classification? I don't think so.

<comment><USER3> Maybe for copying and pasting MNIST-in-Keras.

But to even understand and make good use of cross-validation, you absolutely need to understand expected values, sample size, and the bias/variance tradeoff. That's all statistical intuition that depends more or less directly on a basic understanding of and healthy respect for probability.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> [http://www.datasciencekids.org/p/home- page.html](http://www.datasciencekids.org/p/home-page.html)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I found this via [https://andrewgelman.com/2018/11/30/stephen-wolfram- explains...](https://andrewgelman.com/2018/11/30/stephen-wolfram-explains- neural-nets/) which is a nice little intro.</comment>


Cleve Shaffer's 1937 SF subway plan - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sfgate.com/thebigevent/2015/07/10/35-years-before-bart-a-subway-and-moving-sidewalk-on-market-st/

<comment><USER2> On the subject of old San Francisco transportation plans, check out this map of the desired freeways in the late 40s/early 50s:

[http://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~25...](http://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~258970~5522255)

[http://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~25...](http://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~258982~5522256)

The plan was to wipe out a bunch of downtown neighborhoods and blanket the city in freeways so it would be more accessible from the suburbs, just as happened to many other American cities in the 50s–70s. Luckily, San Franciscans protested loudly and most of it didn't happen.

Another fascinating one is Burnham's San Francisco plan from 1905. He wanted to add plazas, green spaces, etc. reminiscent of European cities, to end up with something like this:

[http://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~28...](http://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~28527~1120417)

Then the earthquake and fire happened and the plan was scuttled. (Was probably unrealistically destructive and expensive in the first place, but kind of interesting to look at.)

<comment><USER3> Civic Center and most of downtown Market to be replaced by a "Central Parking District"?!

Oh my god, that's even worse than I thought. Bonus points for proposing a "Southern Crossing" bridge be built to Alameda (I guess)... I'm not sure what the point of that would have been, let alone how they'd make it happen from a technical standpoint. (The Bay Bridge was buildable because it made a landing on Treasure Island; there's no such stopping point for this bridge.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Fascinating. Robert Heinlein's "The Roads Must Roll"[1] was written in 1940, after this article. Heinlein's roads had sections that went up to 100MPH but otherwise look to be taken from the idea in this 1937 article.

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Roads_Must_Roll](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Roads_Must_Roll)</comment>